Saturday, May 5, 2007

Shirakawa

The former owners of the Shirakawa Distillery in Fukushima have left their Japanese single malt making days far behind.

Takara Shuzou, an old sake and shochu making business tracing its roots back to the mid 19th century, is now more famous for cutting up and manipulating DNA than whisky distilling. Takara workers might have been forgiven for thinking the bosses had been drinking from the barrels when they announced a biotech research centre in 1967, but the investment paid off in the late 70s when they produced enzymes that identified and separated DNA sequences. Takara are now big players in that world.

The Takara holding company still has an alcohol arm. In the 50s and 60s, its "King" blended whisky and "Takara" beer brands were quite prominent. The beer is long gone and, though you can still buy the blended whisky, Takara now makes most of its sales through traditional Japanese alcohols, chu-hai cocktail drinks and mirin cooking sake. Its quality whisky making is now entirely offshore - it owns the Tomatin distillery in Scotland - and a brief flirtation with the Japanese single malt scene seems to have finished quite a long time before the Shirakawa distillery was officially closed in 2003. Shirakawa, which had been bought by Takara from another brewer immediately after the Second World War, was being used solely as a bottling plant in its later years.

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Introduction

This site is probably the most comprehensive source on the Japanese whisky scene in English. It is also independent. No one who writes for Nonjatta is employed or paid by Japanese distillers and/or retailers.